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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

🌌 NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

Open Cluster M50 Credit and Copyright:

Date: 1997-01-28

Open Cluster M50
Credit and Copyright:

View HD Image

Explanation:

Many stars form in clusters. Two types of
star clusters are visible in our Milky Way Galaxy:
open clusters and globular clusters.
Open clusters like M50, shown above,
typically contain hundreds of stars,
many of which are bright, young, and blue. In fact, most of the
bright blue stars in the above picture belong to M50,
but most of the dimmer, red stars do not. M50 lies about 3000
light-years from Earth and is about
20 light years across. Open clusters
tend to have irregular shapes and are mostly found in the plane of our Galaxy.